In a video message sent to supporters,
Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President Chad Griffin called Tuesday's
election the “most important and historic in the history of the
LGBT movement.”

“After a 2-year effort, $20 million
dollars raised and contributed, and HRC's largest mobilization effort
in our history, we've won a landslide victory for equality at the
ballot box. We've secured the first-ever electoral victories for
marriage equality in Maine, Maryland and Minnesota, and we're
optimistic about the results still to come in Washington,” Griffin
said in the 2-minute video.

“We've got to seize the mantle and
continue to push forward, because at a moment like this, when
momentum is at our back, we don't slow down, we double down,” he
said. (The video is embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)

GLAAD President Herndon Graddick echoed
that sentiment.

“Visibility and progress for LGBT
people have grown under President Obama and now that momentum must
continue. LGBT people deserve full equality in every aspect of
American life and President Obama, in his second term, should take
every concrete step within his power to make it so.”

Evan Wolfson, founder and president of
Freedom to Marry, the nation's largest group advocating for marriage
equality, said voters proved foes “wrong.”

“Our huge, happy, and historic wave
of wins last night signaled irrefutable momentum for the freedom to
marry, with voters joining courts, legislatures, and the reelected
president of the United States in moving the country toward the right
side of history. The anti-gay opposition kept moving the goalposts
and had as their last talking point that we could not win a popular
vote on the freedom to marry. Last night, voters in Maine, Maryland,
Minnesota, and, all signs suggest, Washington proved them wrong,
wrong, wrong and wrong.”

Chuck Wolfe, president and CEO of the
Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a group which supports openly LGBT
candidates, called Tuesday's results a “breathtaking leap forward”
in an e-mail to supporters.